


Beyond the Walls

by thinlizzy2



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied past torture and rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-16 15:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5831602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinlizzy2/pseuds/thinlizzy2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the run with Sansa, the man who was once Theon Greyjoy finds what he needs to survive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond the Walls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



Nothing that he gives her can possibly be enough. 

The broken man who was once Theon Greyjoy does what little he can. Being used to eating trash, he is usually able to scavenge little edible bits from the rubbish that they can get. There isn't much worth eating, but it's enough to keep them alive. He makes her take the best bits, though he doubts that she recognises them as such. 

That's good, really. Sansa Stark should never fall so low as to know which garbage is the best. 

They have to lie low and yet at the same time blend in. His instinct is to huddle into dark crevices like a rabbit trying to evade a hound, hoping to make himself small enough and insignificant enough to evade the predator's snapping jaws. But Sansa is far cleverer than he is, and she points out that tracks across virgin snow and even the most meager of campsites would act as beacons to guide Ramsay right to them. 

The hunter is skilled and strong. Camouflage is their only hope.

So they hide as well as they can among the lost and the sick, a population that seems to be growing by leaps and bounds as winter draws ever nearer. Once-Theon can remember Eddard Stark's tender care of the Northern poor, his determination that no one should suffer more than necessary. He had never realised before what a task that had been to ensure, for in the absence of that good warden human suffering is multiplying like vermin. 

Still, that means more cover for Ned Stark's daughter to hide behind, and for that the former Theon is grateful. Though it pains his heart to see Sansa fading into shadows with her head down and her face hidden he knows it would be far worse if she could not disappear with such astonishing skill. It astonishes him how she does it, the way she can sit beside a campfire with her hood drawn up and her knees tucked to her chest and somehow force her light to flicker out into nothingness. She becomes a slip, a shadow, maybe diseased, maybe mad and maybe not even female. 

And yet at the same time, she seems dangerous. There is clearly something off, somehow, if one looks closely enough to see it. There is a sharp edge to her soul, something hard and jagged in the tilt of her head and the set of her shoulders. It is barely there most of the time. But it is enough. The men they hide amongst are all prey. They shy away from the wolf in terror. 

So it is only the desperate and the mad who try to touch Sansa with their filth. And then he himself becomes the beast. He snarls and spits, bares those teeth that he has left and lunges for throats. It would be a pitiful display against Ramsay or any of his men but against this lot it will do. 

They cannot hide forever. Whenever she judges it safe to do so, Sansa asks after a tall noblewoman, an ugly wench in armour, her mother's sworn sword, a Lannister's whore. Someone who she believes might protect her and take her somewhere safe. The man who used to be Theon is not certain if these are all the same person, but he lives in terror of finding her or them. He is certain he will lose Sansa then. If she is going to the trouble of seeking out another guardian then she must know that he is not truly up to the task. And when she is gone, what reason will he have to go on living? 

At the same time, he hopes Sansa finds what she seeks. He hopes she gets everything she has ever longed for. 

That's why he refuses every time she offers him the use of her cape or her boots, though they are far superior to his own tattered wrappings. It's why he carefully plucks all the vegetables worth eating out of his little mug of brown slop and adds them to hers before he places it in front of her. He watches her eat and his heart sings with it. Then he lays his threadbare cloak on the ground, hoping it will be enough to keep her dry through the night. 

She tugs her own cloak around her like a blanket and then pulls it back a fraction, offering him a warm place to sleep for the night. He shakes his head and clutches his little tin knife. This is their usual routine now. He will spend this night like every other night. 

Watching over her. 

"If you're sure..." She is grateful, really. He knows that. He understands that she doesn’t want to feel a man lying next to her, not yet and possibly never again. She would only tolerate him, and he thinks that is because he is no longer truly a man at all. 

In a way, perhaps it is good that he is not Theon anymore, that he can never be Theon again. But, thanks to her, he is not Reek anymore either. He saw how she hated hearing him speak of himself that way, the way she would flinch whenever he whimpered and whinged out the pathetic rhymes that had become second nature. It hadn't been easy, but he'd learned to bite them back. So that she doesn't have to endure them. 

Sometimes he is stunned that he has done so much to shield her from further pain. He has not just silenced the Reek within; it is more than that. He killed Myranda, a creature nearly as fearsome as her lord. He leapt, literally _leapt_ into the unknown. And he has defied Ramsay, a feat that seems so impossible that there are days when he is certain that he is dreaming and he will wake again soon, bleeding and in chains.

At other times, all that he has done makes perfect sense.

Because somehow Sansa has never stopped seeing a man when she looks at him, not at Winterfell and not now that she knows full well what little is left of him. Not a man she trusts, not fully. Certainly not a man she likes. But a man, a _person_ , not a stinking pile of meat. He has seen it in her eyes ever since she arrived at Winterfell and he lives in dread of that all changing. He does not believe her to be correct in her belief. But her delusion is one of the most precious things in the world to him.

Sansa's eyes flutter shut. She is exhausted, of course. They are constantly traveling; it is essential that they keep moving. They trekked for hours that day, and tomorrow they must leave again at the crack of dawn. Even among such company, it is not safe to be seen in broad daylight. 

Still, he will protect her as best he can. He watches as her breathing slows, growing even and steady. The lines between her eyes smooth away; her jaw unclenches. In the faint light she looks a bit like she did as a girl, when he was whole and complete and she was his little sister and so much had been possible. It is astonishing to him but somehow she can still sleep as though she believes herself to be safe. 

He settles beside her, on his knees at the edge of the tattered bit of fabric. And he prepares himself to kill to make her so.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SegaBarrett for Round One of Chocolate Box.


End file.
